4A SECTIONAL: O’FALLON 3, EDWARDSVILLE 0

Edwardsville’s Fahd Shakeel reacts after his team’s 3-1 loss to O’ Fallon in a semifinal of the Bloomington Class 4A Sectional Wednesday at Hopkins Field in Alton.

O’ Fallon’s starting pitcher Christopher Holba works against Edwardsville in the fifth inning of Wednesday’s 4A sectional game at Hopkins Field.

ALTON — Chris Holba was more than willing to be the one who got an opportunity to slay the dragon.

And in a beautifully crafted complete-game victory, the O’Fallon senior pitcher took down the state’s No. 1-ranked Class 4A team.

Holba’s four-hitter didn’t come without some late-game jitters, but his masterpiece helped the Panthers take down the Edwardsville Tigers 3-1 on Wednesday in a Bloomington (Illinois Wesleyan) Class 4A Sectional semifinal game played at Hopkins Field.

The Panthers (29-9), who lost two Southwestern Conference games against the Tigers during the regular season, advance to Saturday’a 11 a.m. sectional championship against Minooka, a 6-5 winner over Normal Community West in a game played at Jack Horenberger Field in Bloomington. Those two teams played on Tuesday night. Edwardsville’s amazing season closes at 35-2.

Holba, who threw seven innings of three-hit ball against the Tigers earlier in the season (a 2-1 Tigers victory in 11 innings on April 14), was equally as impressive, if not better.

He allowed an unearned run in the seventh inning when an error kept the game going, walked one and struck out seven, including five of the first six batters he faced.

The East Carolina product improved to 9-2 and had Edwardsville’s batters guessing most of the game.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” Holba said. “I skipped my start against them last time so they wouldn’t see. I was really excited about this game.

“… My slider was really good. I didn’t need to use my changeup as much, but I really felt like I needed to locate my fastball today. I think that was the difference-maker.”

Not many teams can be able to handle the Edwardsville bats like Holba did, and he did so twice. In 14 innings, he’s allowed one earned run, seven hits, five walks and 12 strikeouts.

“Chris Holba has the potential to do that,” O’Fallon coach Jason Portz said. “He’s done that just about every outing out. He had that same type of outing at Edwardsville. He was just as dominant at Edwardsville. They struck some balls well here today and got some good swings, but his slider was dominating today, and that’s the most velocity — I didn’t have him on a gun — we’ve seen him have. Without question that’s the most dominating pitching performance we’ve had with one of our arms.”

Edwardsville started to get some good swings on Holba towards the end of the second and third time through the lineup, but the Panthers had already staked Holba to a three-run lead with two in the third on a pair of fielder’s choice ground balls (one for an error) and a sacrifice fly in the fifth from senior Nick Crabtree, his second RBI of the game.

“We didn’t have the at-bats we wanted early in the game to put ourselves in a situation to score some runs,” Edwardsville coach Tim Funkhouser said. “Credit their pitcher; he was outstanding. He was really sharp early on and when we did put some swings on some balls, they were able to make some nice catches in the field. They’re a quality club. We knew that going into the season.

“(Holba’s) breaking pitch was really good today. We had video and some guys scouting and I didn’t think he was as sharp against (Belleville) West, but he’s good. We knew he was going to be good, so that wasn’t a surprise from that standpoint.”

Edwardsville put the first two runners on base in the bottom of the seventh when Fahd Shakeel and Bailey Zimmer singled. After a fielder’s choice put runners at first and third with one out, the call of the game came after Holba picked Mitchell Krebs off first, or did he? Funkhouser raced over to argue the call from the first base umpire that potentially took away a big inning for Edwardsville.

“Obviously I wouldn’t go over there if I didn’t think he wasn’t safe, but we don’t want to put ourselves in that situation and being down in that part of the game,” Funkhouser said. “It’s unfortunate that that was the case there. I know we don’t have instant replay to challenge or anything like that. The umpires do a great job, but we just had a disagreement and that’s how it is.”

The Tigers got a run when O’Fallon second baseman Connor Breyer booted Joe Wallace’s grounder that scored Shakeel, and Jordan Hovey represented the tying run.

Hovey, who homered twice at O’Fallon the last time the teams played, gave the ball a ride but it was a long flyout to right-center field that ended Holba’s game at 109 pitches.

“That last inning, we just wanted to get the tying run on deck,” Funkhouser said. “Jordan put a good swing on the ball. Unfortunately the wind ate it up a little bit.”

O’Fallon was able to touch Edwardsville starter Jake Garella (5-1) for two runs on three hits in 3 1/3 innings, then add a third run off reliever Chris Robinson.

“When you win ballgames like this and you’re able to go out and win a game 3-1 against a quality a team as Edwardsville, you’ve got to do things right in every facet of the game,” Portz said. “… We got doubled up on some balls, but those were tweeners where our guys were staying aggressive and taking some chances that they made some great plays on. I just feel like we played every facet of the game well and to win sectional games, you have to do that.

“We’ve been playing this kind of baseball all year long. We’ve been getting solid pitching, we’ve been playing solid defense and getting timely hits. Today, we didn’t get as many hits on the board, but man, we were able to move runners and steal bases and also put the ball in play when we had to.”

O’Fallon took the underdog role and ran with it and extended their season, while the dejected Tigers sat down the right field line for the final time wondering what might have been.

“We’ve lost nine ballgames, and sometimes you’ll write a team off that’s lost nine ballgames and at no point have we had a negative vibe or just a negative practice,” Portz said. “There was one time where our guys were playing a little bit lethargic and we had a team meeting and a tough practice, but from that point forward, our guys were really, really focused.”